Clover Ledge Farm

Thank god Dreamy proved me wrong yet AGAIN. :D

The mare who could not bend or canter at home was a rockstar at this past weekend's SMDA dressage show. We scored a 70% on our Intro B test which was outstanding! It is the highest we have ever scored on a dressage test (we did score a 27.3 on our last three phase event dressage test....which translates to a 72.7% for USDF dressage....but that is not something you usually point out. The scores are calculated differently for each....percentages for USDF dressage and penalty points (lower is better) for eventing dressage.)

Anyway, so the 70% was a nice surprise. We had an excellent warm-up, so I felt pretty confident when I rode. But when I went up to the booth to see about my test sheet, I nearly shouted when I saw the blue ribbon attached to it. "That's MINE????" I said to which the manager (who is a STB friend) replies, "SHHHHHH!" ROFL! ;-)

So we had an hour break until Training 1. There were a TON of Intro rider…

As a dear friend told me when I vented about Dreamy's seemingly overnight loss of cantering ability, "that's the beauty in retraining an ex-racehorse!"

I am having to dig pretty deep to find the beauty here folks. ;-)

UGGGG. Not a good day. That wonderful canter at my lesson on July 15? Yup, it is gone. :(

I am kicking myself that I had the chiro work done on July 16. Now, don't get me wrong, Dr. J is great. He found a TON of stuff going on with Dreamy and I am sure all the adjustments certainly helped her in some ways. There is now more freeness (is that a word?) and swinging in her back. Bending does seem a bit easier to the left. But to the RIGHT? Her bending is worse.

And we lost the canter. :(

I gave her the 2 days off like he said. Then rode Sat. and she was awful. So I lunged her on Sunday after the driving show because I was being lazy. Canter seemed OK on the lunge line......and actually she was pretty good. I only rode once this past week because of the rain…

So today was a driving show that I was both co-manager and co-secretary. It was a LOOONG day, but it went OK. A small number of entries and a late day carriage accident were the low points of the day. :( (Horse is OK).

Anyway, I was tired when I got home. I knew I had to work Dreamy, but I just couldn't summon the energy to ride. So I figured I would lunge her. The last time I lunged her was October 2007, as I figured it would be a good way to work on her developing canter without the weight of a rider. In a word, it was awful.

So now that her canter has improved 1000% since then, I figured it would be interesting to see how she would be. If she was awful again, then I would just do some ground work and jumping on the line a la David O'Connor. We have not done any DOC stuff for a while anyway. Plus it was off and on showers and I rather get my surcingle wet than my saddle.

Of course, Dreamy was a rockstar and I wished I had just sucked it up and rode. :P We did some preliminary w…

So.......I have rationalized it about 100 ways, but bottom line, Ms. Dreamy had an off day. Our ride tonight was rather.......awful.

After having the chiropractic work on Wed, July 16, Dr. J advised that I give her two days off. Of course, last night (Friday) it began raining at 3PM and never let up.....by 8PM I gave up and changed out of my riding clothes. Rain alone would have been OK, but that little thing called thunder and lightening just gives me second thoughts about being atop a horse in an open field.

SIGH

I do think that 3 days off is WAAAAY too much for this horse. She seems to be happiest when we ride 2 days in a row and then have one day off.....or three days in a row and one day off. Sometimes I can get away with 2 days off in a row, but one seems to work much better.

So, I was eager to ride tonight. It was muggy, so I figured a 40-45 minutes ride would be fine. Things started off OK, as we did walk-halt-walk transitions and walk-trot-walk transitions like our lesson this pa…

...but she is worth every penny. :)

Dr. J came out on Wednesday July 16 to do chiropractic work on Dreamy. It is the first time he has worked on her, and I really liked him.

It cracks me up how the horse folks who realize the horse is an athlete and needs to use its body in specific ways totally accept that chiro work is valid on a horse. And then the MAJORITY of horse folks and ALL non-horse folks think it is ludicrous that a HORSE is seen by a chiropractor

How much did you spend???" they shriek in disbelief.

It was money well spent. Based on the issues we have had bending and moving to the left (especially at the left lead canter), neither Dr. J or I were surprised by what he found.

BUT I was surprised at how MUCH he found.

Hmmm.....her atlas (poll) was out of joint, she has TMJ on the right, her left ribs, her C7 in her neck, her withers, her right patella (stifle), her right shoulder, and the biggest thing was her pelvis and sacral apex something......basically the pelvis was compl…

After having to miss a week because of scheduling conflicts on my end, I FINALLY had a lesson this Tuesday. I would love to literally take 2-3 lessons a week! So I was feeling really deprived.

Dreamy was fabulous, as usual. This has been her normal routine lately.....to make my jaw drop each time I ride. At least I did not cry with happiness in my lesson tonight....how embarrassing would THAT have been? ROFL! ;-)

We started with some walk-halt-walk transitions on the 20 m. circle. I focused on getting her to move off my leg immediately into a crisp and forward walk. And then ride her into the halt. After a few times, I could feel her haunches come underneath her and she was right there on my aids. What a nice feeling to have a horse on the aids! :)

Then walk-trot-walk transitions. Again, we worked on getting her to move off my leg immediately and without having to tap-tap-tap and THEN get the transition. She was really keyed into my seat and leg and stayed fairly steady in the contact. O…

Tonight we had a great ride. I gave Dreamy Monday off of course, and then Tuesday I was unable to ride, and then Wed. it was so darned hot I just couldn't summon the energy to ride at 8PM (which was the only time I could ride). UGG.

So tonight I finally got on and the weather was perfect. :D Dreamy was a bit funny about her near hind leg on the ties while tacking up. Sometimes she does this hoof stomping/kicking thing, and I think it is related to her heat cycles. It is like she is ticklish around her stifle/gaskin on that leg and does not kick, but stomps hard enough to let me know she means business. Hmmm...

And when picking her feet, her joints were REALLY creaky. I have never really heard her joints before. Not good. She has been on Corta-Flx now for almost 2 years as a preventative. Now I am wondering if I need to find something else for her because obviously she NEEDS a joint supplement at this point. Hmmm...

SO.....the first few minutes of the ride she is really stiff. Oh boy,…

These three videos completely crack me up...

Today we competed at Green Acres Horse Trial. It is our fourth event ever, and our first event in 2008. I opted to show again at Pre-Elementary, only because I was unsure if we were 100% ready to move up. We earned a second and 2 thirds last year, but I just wanted to play it safe. There are enough problems in eventing right now....I did not want to be another injury statistic. :(

Well, let's just say we are DEFINITELY ready to move up! :) Dreamy was fantastic and we ended up FIRST IN OUR DIVISION! There were 14 riders in our division so that was no small feat! We ended on our dressage score of 27.3, which means we went clean in both XC and stadium jumping. Eventing is scored using penalty points, so the lower your score the better. (This is unlike "straight" dressage, where you score a percentage and higher is better). So a 27.3 in "straight" dressage is a 72.7%! HOLY COW! This is our best dressage score EVER. We scored four 6s, six 7s, and three 8s!!! One of t…